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We passed through the sleepy Mexican towns, that were situated along the route, without disturbing in the least degree the habitual drowsiness of their inhabitants. On the fourth day we made a stretch of sixty miles through that terror of travelers in this section the "jornado del muerto."
Plymouth Rock is unnamed yet. Then the mist shuts down. The Santa Fé Trail reaches across the Jornado; tradition tells of vague, wild battles with Apache and Navajo; there are grave-cairns on lone dim ridges, whereon each passer casts a stone. Young mothers dreamed over the cradles of those who now sleep here, undreaming; here is the end of all dreams.
You might have thought the Jornado a vast and savage waste or a pleasant place and a various. That depended upon you.
I'll go up to the Jornado to-night and stay with the Bar Cross boys awhile. He won't come up there." "You'll enjoy having people tellin' how you run away to keep from meeting Dick Marr?" said Applegate incredulously. "Why shouldn't they say it? It will be exactly true," responded Foy quietly, "and you're authorized to say so.
So the Bar Cross Cattle Company was founded; range, the Jornado. Our candidate provided the money and a manager, also ambidextrous with instructions to get those votes and incidentally to double the money, as a good and faithful manager should. He got the six votes, but our candidate never became president. Poor fellow, his millions could not bring him happiness.
The leg of it is in Mexico, the toe is in Arizona, the heel in New Mexico; and the Jornado is in the boot-heel. El Jornado del Muerto the Journey of the Dead Man! From what dim old legend has the name come down? No one knows. The name has outlived the story.
By the aid of his knees used as a fulcrum, he lifts a package and tosses it on the mule's back without any apparent effort, the dead weight of which he could not move from the ground. An old-time atajo or caravan of pack-mules generally numbered from fifty to two hundred, and it travelled a jornado, or day's march of about twelve or fifteen miles.
He drew a dollar from his pocket, balanced it on his thumb, and continued: "We will now invoke the arbitrament of chance to decide the destinies of nations. Heads, I order an assortment of vines and fig trees, go back to the Jornado and become a cattle-king, I proceed to New-York-on-the-Hudson, by the Ess-Pee at 3:15 this A.M. presently, and arouse that somnolent city from its Rip Van Winkle."
At Upham the rest of them were to unload and string out across the Jornado, so as to cut Chris off from the Bar Cross round-up at Alaman. It's some of that bunch I saw coming, I guess. And the others were to scatter out and come up the middle of the plain. They'll drag the Jornado with a fine-toothed comb." "How's he to get away, then?"
While crossing the Jornado del Muerte, he and one or two confederates, whom he had put up to his plan, disguised themselves as Apache Indians, attacked their fellow sheep-drivers, murdered them, and made themselves masters of the flock.
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